General Petraeus Deserves the Nobel Peace Prize

Or, Was This Segment Just Another Excuse to Bash Al Gore Show MoveOn's "Betray Us" Ad, Again?

One of the segments featured today (October 11, 2007) on Fox's "premiere business news" show was one advocating that, instead of the rumored Al Gore, General David Petraeus should get the Nobel Peace Prize. The segment was so full of fantasy that it almost seemed as if it was constructed to slight Al Gore and give Cavuto a ninth -- yes, ninth -- excuse to show MoveOn.org's "Betray Us" ad.

Cavuto opened over a chyron that read, "WHERE'S AL?", by saying that Al Gore "abruptly canceled" a previously scheduled appearance today, and he surmised that Gore might be "warming up the Nobel judges." Cavuto's smarmy implication that Gore was schmoozing the judges was not only an insult to the Nobel Committee, it was nothing more than gratuitous nastiness. The Peace Prize winner will be announced tomorrow so I doubt anyone can do anything to influence the outcome at this late date.

The chyron changed to, "Give Gen. Petraeus the Nobel Peace Prize," and Cavuto said talk of Gore winning "ticks off my next guest. He has another candidate, one he says actually has done something for peace. With me now, I'm happy to say, is Seth Lipsky. Seth is the editor of the New York Sun. Seth, the suspense is killing me. Who deserves it?" (Yeah, right. Cavuto the actor. As if he had no clue as to who Lipsky would say "deserves it.")

Lipsky said, "Well, we have nominated General David Patraeus ah, as a representative of G.I. Joe."

Cavuto: "So, the guy in charge of Iraq. A lotta people will come back and say that doesn't make sense. You say it does. Why?"

Lipsky: "Well, actually, we think it makes a lotta sense. We...have been nursing this idea for five or six years."

Lipsky continued: "The idea is that the American G.I. really is a peacemaker. Our G.I.'s don't go overseas to conquer. They go overseas to liberate. They go overseas to ah, to ah, make peace and ah..."

Cavuto saved the stumbling Lipsky with an interruption: "You know, the global view, when you ask about America's role in Iraq, is that he's the guy spearheading a war." (Can't say I've heard Fox use the word "occupation" yet.)

Lipsky said, "I have a different view of it and I think most of the G.I.'s have a different view of it." As far back as Vietnam, "the G.I.'s there were very idealistic. The whole mission was really idealistic."

Cavuto, "Right. When you fight and save lives down the road that's, that's fighting for a good cause."

Lipsky, "I can't think of anything more directly responsive to the idealism of the Nobel Peace Prize itself than the kinds of liberation and peacekeeping that our G.I. Joe and G.I. Jane has had as a mission ever since World War II."

Comment: Lipsky sure didn't convince me that Patraeus deserves a Nobel Peace Prize but I was reminded of that MoveOn ad and oh yeah, Al Gore is kinda weird, isn't he? You know -- he pretends he's doing something for peace, like saving the planet, in contrast to Petraeus who has "actually" "done something for peace." Real men make war. Peace through war. War is peace. Whatever. It's Fox.